In 2006 I was speaking on the telephone to Serge Hochar, owner of the iconic Lebanese winery Chateau Musar, when I asked him where he was calling from. The Galápagos Islands came the reply. Intrigued and surprised, I asked him what he was doing there. He answered that he was on his way to Antarctica. I asked him why? He said, “because my wine has been there and I don’t want my wine to go anywhere that I have not been”. This might resonate with many Port Shippers but the back story to this was that an acquaintance of mine asked me to sell a bottle of 1967 Chateau Musar for him to take with him to Port Lockroy, Antarctica where he would open it on January 1st to celebrate the New Year 2005. This he did and he returned the bottle to me sealed with orange duck tape having been filled with arctic ice which he’d scraped off a glacier. It was, incidentally, much heavier than a bottle filled with normal water. Alas, most Port Shippers have not matched this degree of adventure but some Port enthusiast have come very close.
Count Gelasio Gaetani D’Aragona di Lovatelli, though not yet a Confrade at the time of writing, is no stranger to the notion of adventure and philosophy that any time spent not drinking Port is time wasted. This grandest of any Italian grandee is as passionate about Port as you or me. I first met him in 1987 after my recent move to Sausalito, near San Francisco. This long haired aristocrat, one whose family once owned the greatest palaces in Rome and boasts two blood relative Popes, was already a friend of my father, the late Confrade Michael Broadbent. Gelasio asked if he could come to visit and profess his love for Port on his way to Sacramento where he would be skydiving for the weekend. Of course, intrigued, I welcomed him and we became quick friends. Discussion led to the real motive, a passionate bucket list goal was to drink some Port while free-falling thousands of feet about planet earth.
Plans were developed very quickly. The time it takes to plummet towards earth was not long enough to decant a wine, besides I placed too much emotional attachment to my fine crystal decanters. Indeed, it wasn’t really realistic even to have a proper Port glass as the breakage risk was very great. Gelasio’s brother had recently died while skydiving so he might not have cared as much about my Port glasses as I did. Anyway, a fine tawny Port seemed to be the perfect solution and I grabbed a bottle of Dow’s 1964 Reserve which was plentifully in my cellar. I was working for the Symington family at the time.
Luckily the bottle had a stopper-cork closure which did not require anything other than Gelasio’s teeth to open it. He took with him a plastic glass that he could safely dispose of in the air to save washing it on the ground. The litter was never recovered but nobody ever looked for it. As can be seen in a series of photographs, the skydiving Count did indeed open a bottle mid fall, pour himself a glass, and drink it before discarding the glass and zipping the bottle back in his overalls.
Could this be a challenge to all Port enthusiasts to find the most exotic ever moment to drink Port? I’d say the bar is set high, the moon’s the limit.
Bartholomew Broadbent